2017 has been a full-on, productive year for us all here at MQ, and the New Year is alreay looking good!
Exciting news for 2018: we’re releasing the new album – Witchcraft Jazz – on vinyl! A limited edition, double LP with funky artwork courtesy of Dmitry will soon be available for pre-order. It’s a limited edition, copies are numbered, so watch this page for the pre-order link as the campaign will only run for 49 days. No turntable? No problem – we’re giving a free digital download with each record bought, and we’ll be making a few CDs, too.
Here’s a sneak preview: Dmitry listening to the final DMM master of a track from Side 1: The Bartender.
MetaQuorum’s new album, WITCHCRAFT JAZZ, is filling up! We now have 7 tracks mixed and mastered, with another three or four in the pipeline.
Crimson Dreams
Track 6, Crimson Dreams, came together pretty quickly, despite Koos and Dmitry getting into the nitty gritty of polyrhythmic sequences.
And it’s one of Carol’s personal favourites.
Mathematics and Music
Track 7 is The Limping Mathematician – forget about polyrhythmic sequences: ‘It’s based on the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, by George Russell, but this one’s gone crazy!” as Dmitry puts it. So much so that we even had to call in an Advanced Maths student to whip up an equation for calculating volume distribution through multi-track instrument groups. Here it is!!
Cheers, Suzanne Lees!
And back to the music – Koos recorded what he describes as a ‘monster drum break’ using his new NI Studio Drummer plug-in.
Victor Mikheyev sent us a spacey bass-line recorded in his apartment by the Black Sea in Varna, Bulgaria.
Dmitry used his new Komplete Kontrol S61 keyboard and soft to record a rhythm clavinet for the track.
The new Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S61 is a truly versatile combination of a top-notch keyboard midi-controller and an amazing collection of software instruments, both synths and sampled. While checking the soundbanks and tweaking the various parameters of the instrument, Dmitry spontaneously played this short piece. Fortunately, Carol was nearby and filmed it or it would have been lost because Cubase wasn’t on 😉
Making Waves in Kathmandu
If you happen to be in Nepal, be sure to drop by the New Orleans Caffe in Thamel. It plays a very cool selection of jazz, blues, funk and prog and its playlist now includes the full MetaQuorum collection.
Carol, vocalist on Migration, enjoying a banana lassi while listening to MetaQuorum’s Cream of the Summer EP in The New Orleans Jazz Caffe, Kathmandu.
Graças
And last but not least, a big THANK YOU to all our fans in Brazil for listening in on SoundCloud! Cheers, guys!!
Happy New Year from all of us @ MetaQuorum to all our friends! May 2017 be full of joy and great music!
Here is a short mellow improvisation to great you in the New Year:
We started the New Year by working on new tracks for our next album Witchcraft Jazz due later in the year. So far we have recorded, produced, mixed and mastered five tracks. Several more are at various stages of work. Among them Seven Dwarfs Rock and Crimson Dreams. Here are a couple of short videos shot by Carol during the recording/production stages. First one was shot as we were recording vocals:
As you can see, we had loads of fun :))
And the one below is a super-short documentary about composing and recording Crimson Dreams:
Well that’s it for the time being. Just wanted to keep in touch with you, guys, and show you some snippets of our behind the scenes creative process.
We are delighted to announce the release of our new single – CHICKEN AND EGG. It’s a great collaboration of art, music and philosophy.
Philosophy
This track is the musical expression of an ongoing question we each face every day when we try to understand the causes and effects behind what’s going on in our lives and in the universe as a whole: what comes first and what follows? The universal timeless dilemma of the chicken and egg.
Art
The cover art was drawn by our dear friend Alexander Voitsekhovsky and by happy coincidence, his exhibition in London coincides with our release. Like Dmitry’s music, Alexander’s art is ‘full of humour and mischief; it intrigues the soul.’ Or as one critic put it: “you can’t stop wondering how these small, childly naive pictures can shine with so much artistic and human sincerity and light.”
If you are in London, you can visit his exhibition @
6 Pall Mall East, SW1Y 5BF (corner of Whitcomb street and Pall Mall East, entrance in Whitcomb street via black double doors) 27 Oct. – 6 Nov. 2016.
Dmitry and Alexander by the sea near Dunstanborough Castle, Northumberland, UK.
Music
The rhythmic track is a meld of various styles: jazz-rock, funk, prog & electronica, great polyrhythmic drum breaks from Koos; and a fusion of mixing techniques. The result? The unmistakable sound of Meld music, pioneered by MetaQuorum.
For the story behind the track and some improvisation on theme, watch the short video below – it was our first attempt at a live Facebook video, so apologies for all the glitches, poor lighting etc.
Listen and Enjoy
You can listen, download, buy the track on Bandcamp or following any of the links in the Liner Notes below:
CHICKEN & EGG
A new single from the forthcoming album Witchcraft Jazz by MetaQuorum
Release Date: 27/10/2016
Dmitry Ermakov scribbled the sketch for this track as fragments of a score many years ago in a very different time and place: St. Petersburg, in a crumbling Soviet Union. The fragments rose from the ashes in 2016 while MetaQuorum were recording their second album, Witchcraft Jazz, in MQ’s recording studio in Weardale, North Pennines.
Just got call from Markus Bluesharp from Switzerland who played a fantastic harp solo on MetaQuorum’s single The Piper & The Frog. Markus reports Radio X Basel @ https://www.radiox.ch/ will have a short presentation of this single around 18:30 Swiss time. So you can tune in following the link below. Press ‘Livestream’ and off you go!
Well, Koos and Dmitry have managed to snatch time in their busy schedules to finish mixing two tracks for the new album: Socket Swing, and Swagger. We’ve just got the masters back from Chris Longwood of SugarHill Recording Studios – he’s worked his magic – great results!
So that means we’re one step nearer to our NEW ALBUM – WITCHCRAFT JAZZ. It’s going to be another great album, and we’re especially pleased that Victor Mikheyev is joining us again on bass, for three tracks.
Victor and Dmitry working on tracks in Bulgaria, Byala, 2013.
And last but not least, to give you a taster of the album, new single CHICKEN & EGG will be released on October 27.
This video footage is from the first Low Bishopley Sessions, February 2015, when Dmitry and Koos were selecting tracks for recording and production. Here, Dmitry improvises around the main theme from Chicken & Egg and discusses how it could be developed. Actually, it took quite a different turn in the end…
Above is some early archive VIDEO material for CHICKEN & EGG, new single from MetaQuorum’s forthcoming album WITCHCRAFT JAZZ.
Cover art by Dmitry’s old and dear friend Petrovich, known in the West as Alexander Voitsekhovsky.
As you know, we released 5 new tracks over the summer, and we’ve now put them together on a brand new compilation CD – Cream of the Summer 2016.
As well as our first song, Migration, the compilation includes Jonathan Livingston, Cyberfunk, The Piper & the Frog, and City Folk. The CD, artwork by Dmitry Ermakov, in a card sleeve, is available together with digital download for £4.50 (+P&P) at: http://goo.gl/UbddtF
WIN A CD!
But – we’re also giving away a few exclusive, signed complitation CD’s in our Summer Competition – just add 3 MetaQuorum tracks to a new Spotify playlist, and you’re in with a chance to win a signed CD. All details are here: http://goo.gl/vZcHc1
MetaQuorum 